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3+ Wild Pitches 3 Times in a Season

Posted by Raphy on July 8, 2009

In tonight's game against the Twins,  AJ Burnett  threw 3 wild pitches in 1 game.  While this stat is not that uncommon, Burnett became the first pitcher since 1954 to do it 3  times in 1 season.  As for the career record, Burnett now has 4 such career games. Here were the leaders (1954-2009) before tonight's games.

                   Games Link to Individual Games
+-----------------+-----+-------------------------+
 Nolan Ryan            7 Ind. Games
 Phil Niekro           7 Ind. Games
 Tommy John            7 Ind. Games
 Jim Maloney           6 Ind. Games
 J.R. Richard          5 Ind. Games
 Juan Guzman           5 Ind. Games
 Tom Candiotti         5 Ind. Games
 John Smoltz           4 Ind. Games
 Joe Niekro            4 Ind. Games
 Mike Moore            4 Ind. Games
 John Lackey           4 Ind. Games
 Orel Hershiser        4 Ind. Games
 Ron Darling           4 Ind. Games
 Tony Cloninger        4 Ind. Games

5 Responses to “3+ Wild Pitches 3 Times in a Season”

  1. Andy Says:

    Pete Abe picked up this stat in his blog post this morning!

  2. Raphy Says:

    In the the interest of full disclosure, I actually emailed it to him.

  3. kingturtle Says:

    I was curious why baseball-reference doesn't keep track of balks either historically or in current leaderboards.

  4. JohnnyTwisto Says:

    Kingturtle, they do have balks. It's not on the major leaderboards because, I guess, it's kind of boring, pointless stat. But PI will tell you that Steve Carlton is far and away the all-time leader in balks. And of course it's on every player's page.

  5. LynchCats Says:

    Three of the five prominent knuckleball starters are on the list. No Hough or Wakefield, kind of surprising.